Page 70 of My Grumpy Fire Chief Next Door
If I need more convincing that she’s holding back now and letting go, it will be the fact that she didn’t look at me when she left the field today.
That hurts more than anything she could’ve said.
I drag my hand down my face, palm rough against the stubble on my jaw, and I try to tell myself that the way she’s letting go doesn’t make sense. No fight. No storm.Just silence and distance.
But deep down, I know why.
I left her with nothing to hold onto.
When she asked what was going on between us, I could’ve told her the truth. About Josie. About the fear that grips my spine every time I start to feel again. About the guilt that still claws at me like a goddamn ghost.
Instead, I shut down because I was afraid she would leave.
Thinking back now, I know I was wrong.
I should’ve said something. Last night. This morning. Hell, any of the million chances I had between pulling her against me and watching her get dressed like it hadn’t meant the world to me. But my mouth dried up. My body knew how to touch her, but my mind… it still belongs to ghosts.
And she felt it.
I know she senses the shift in my mood after making love, the wall I throw up, how I retreat behind that quiet, guarded part of me that I’ve kept locked up since Josie.
She didn’t press and just left with Parker, holding his hand and her own heart in check like she’d already made peace with losing me.
Maybe some part of me wanted her to fight harder, to prove she was worth the risk of letting Josie go. But I should’ve known—Kate knows her value. She’d never beg a man to see it.
I grip Blaze tighter. His collar digs into my forearm, but I don’t let go.
When Parker hugged me at the end of the game, I thought I was holding it together. I thought I could manage that. After all, it’s just a kid’s hug, something easy. But then he looked up at Kate and asked if they could come home with me.
He saidhome.
And she saidno.
There’s no hesitation, and she sounds like she’s already decided that was a boundary she couldn’t afford to blur. She gave me exactly what I thought I wanted. Distance. But now, I realize I don’t want it.
I stare at the flames until my vision blurs. My chest feels too tight, like there’s not enough air in this house or in my lungs. My throat stings. I don’t cry, not really. But something in me feels close to breaking. A thread pulled too tight for too long.
I whisper her name. Just once.
“Kate.”
That name comes with a realization that I don’t want to let her go. I want to chase her.I want to tell her I feel like I’ve been holding my breath since the moment she touched me.
That when she laughs, it knocks the dust off every part of me I thought was dead.
That when she walked away last night, she took something I didn’t know I’d given her.
I shift Blaze off my lap, and he lets out a low, unsure whine, his eyes tracking me like he knows something cracked open in here. He doesn’t move far. Just watches.
My legs feel like they don’t belong to me as I push up from the couch. I’ve sat in this ache so long it’s fused to my bones—and now I don’t know how to move without it.
I turn left down the hallway. Past vacant rooms, past the parts of me I let rot behind closed doors.
Then I stop in front of the room that I only open once a year, on Josie’s anniversary. Today will be the first time I’m opening the door outside that day.
The doorknob sticks when I try to open it, like it always does. The wood’s swollen, warped by time and the kind of grief that seeps in slowly like rot. When it gives, the sound it makes is almost reluctant, like the house itself is askingyou sure?
The air is still. Cold. Preserved.
